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3/01/2016

Book Arts

Sorry I haven't shared any new photos (or really really old photos for that matter) lately. I know I've been slacking but I promise that I haven't totally been doing nothing. Instead of editing photos lately I've been spending a fair amount of time working on a couple of artists books I've been making. Ever since I started working at my current job about 8 years ago and learned how to make books I've been doing just that, making books. But only blank ones, what you'd commonly refer to as journals. I've sold some in the past, but mostly I've just either made them and kept them or made them and given them as gifts (the main recipient being my best friend, Amanda, who actively journals on the regular!). Anyway, I'd never really made a book with any substance or content...until last year.

It's not that I never wanted to make a book with content, or an "artists' book" as it's commonly called, it's just I never really had a single idea. Until last year, when for our student appreciation day we made carousel books (which I had never made before) in the lab, and for the first time ever I had an idea. And so I made my first artist book and I was so excited about it that I entered it into Bookworks XVI (my book is pictured at the very end of the post!), a local collaborative book arts exhibit that's put together by the Cincinnati Book Arts Society (aka CBAS, pronounced like the fish, sea bass) and the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County.

Now, I had been trying to think up an idea for Bookworks for years, but nothing...until I made that first carousel book. I really liked the structure and something about it just inspired me and before I knew it I had a handful of other ideas. Which leads me to the pictures of the book below, my second ever artist book! I worked on this book mainly over the holidays and just now finished up making a custom cloth-covered clamshell box for it, so I figured it was time to share it...

It's called "Cosmic Ocean". It's another carousel book, but this time I used Arches 140lb watercolor paper and QoR watercolors! [Front cover]

[Side opening]

I used small, thin magnets to create clasps on either side of the book to keep it shut.

I also embedded magnets into the front and back cover boards so that the book would stay open for display.

Here's a gif/animation of the five pages, it starts with the Earth and ends with the red galaxy and the space ship.

This was a very fun book to work on and I felt I really pushed myself further on this second artist book. It also, just the like the first, really inspired me and as I was working on it I started to come up with other ideas for other books! I hope you enjoy it! And if you're in the Cincinnati area, I do plan to submit it into the Bookworks XVII exhibit this year, which generally runs from June through August in the Main Branch of the Public Library, if you want to check it out in person.

Cather Quote

“The earth was warm under me, and warm as I crumbled it through my fingers...I kept as still as I could. Nothing happened. I did not expect anything to happen. I was something that lay under the sun and felt it, like the pumpkins, and I did not want to be anything more. I was entirely happy. Perhaps we feel like that when we die and become a part of something entire, whether it is sun and air, or goodness and knowledge. At any rate, that is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great. When it comes to one, it comes as naturally as sleep.” -Willa Cather, My Ántonia